USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Los Angeles county, Volume II > Part 34
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Dr. Ratledge was born at Gillespie, Macoupin County, Illinois, Decem- ber 5, 1879, and is a daughter of Richard Franklin and Mary Elizabeth Denham. When young her parents moved to Iowa, and there she received a public school education. Gifted with mentality above the average, and with true womanly sympathy cherishing an ambition to be of real use in a world that undeniably needs the beneficence of true healing, in the midst of household duties she found time to think, read and study, and with the result that after coming to Los Angeles she became a student of the science of Chiropractic in the Ratledge Chiropractic School, from which institution she was graduated in 1914, and has been in active practice in this city ever since. Her offices in the Stimson Building, Los Angeles, are the largest and best equipped professional offices in Southern California.
In her practice Dr. Ratledge uses exclusively what is known as the Ratledge system, which differs to some extent from that of other chiro- practors, although the underlying principles are the same, in that she uses no massage and no electricity. In the belief that all manifestations of weakness or disease are directly caused by displaced joints of the spine, which impinge on the nerves and interfere with transmission of nerve energy, the chiropractor devotes his attention to an adjustment of the vertebrae. According to her system, Dr. Ratledge uses no helps or instru- ments in making these adjustments, except her trained and sensitive hands, and the marvels that she has accomplished fully justify the confidence and faith that her patients have in her method. During the epidemic of influ- enza that swept over Los Angeles she was one of the busiest practitioners in the city and lost not a single case. From 1914 to 1921 her books show that in that interim she made 74.000 examinations. Dr. Ratledge is a broad- minded, generous-hearted woman as well as a scientist.
MISSES FLORENTINE and MARY VIRGINIA GOODWIN, two talented artists who were the medium of the Ambassador School of Dancing, which they successfully conduct, are making a splendid contribution to the social and cultural life of Los Angeles. The handsomely appointed studio of these young women is situated on the lobby floor of the Ambassador Hotel.
The Misses Goodwin were born at Aspen, Colorado, the place of their nativity being a picturesque mining town in the beautiful mountainous and lake regions of Colorado. When very young the Misses Goodwin, accom-
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panied by their family, moved to the City of Denver, Colorado, where they attended Wolcott School for Girls.
Their father, Timothy Goodwin, is a retired pioneer of mining opera- tions in Leadville and Aspen, Colorado, where he still retains extensive interests. In Salida, Colorado, he erected and placed in operation one of the largest smelters in Colorado, which he later sold to the smelter trust. Several years ago the family home was established in Los Angeles, where the family still reside. In Los Angeles the Misses Goodwin attended Marlborough School for Girls and later Miss Florentine graduated from St. Marys Academy.
In preparation for the profession in which Miss Florentine Goodwin has since achieved marked prestige she attended The Denishawn Dancing School conducted by Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis, the celebrated inter- preter of classical dancing. After completing her course in that institution Miss Goodwin made an extended tour with the Denishawn Dancers, who gave entertainments of classical dancing in all the larger cities of the United States. Later she spent some time in studying in New York with the foremost instructors of the East. After her return to California she opened a dancing school at Long Beach. The venture proved an unqualified success both artistically and financially. Finally she and her sister, Mary Virginia, a talented pianiste, opened their present studio, which has attracted a large and representative patronage. Miss Goodwin has classes in ballroom dancing for young and older pupils, she also gives private instruction, but her best efforts are given to interpretive dancing, in which she is an expert, as an artist of the Denishawn School. She also gives effective solo recitals and entertainments, and her engagements of this order have proved very popular and successful.
Miss Mary Virginia Goodwin, who has charge of the musical end of the studio, has spent years studying piano, in Los Angeles under the direction of Miss Fannie Dillon and Homer Grunn and later spending several years studying piano and harmony in New York City. She accompanies her sister Florentine in all her classical and interpretive dances.
Together the Misses Goodwin give many delightful programs, combining the music and the dancing. They have given many programs for a number of Womans Clubs in Los Angeles and the surrounding towns. They are most successful in their work and represent the finer phases of artistic culture in this metropolitan community.
MYRA BELLE VICKERS. The name of Myra Belle Vickers is associated in the minds of the people of Los Angeles with many delightfully spent evenings listening to the musical programs prepared by her and executed by her efficiently trained classes, the members of which are accepted as being among the best entertainers this section affords. Miss Vickers inherits her musical genius from her mother's side of the house.
Miss Vickers has been entirely trained in America, but has had the advantage of having been under some of the best teachers. Her first study was under Francis Fisher Powers of New York City, and Horace Horton Kinney and Carl Gralow, both instructors in Mr. Powers' studio. She later studied under Emilo Agramonte. Louis Espinal and Franz Muelil- bauer of New York City.
For some time Miss Vickers did concert work, and then began her teaching. She established her classes, and when she came to California in 1919, seven of her girls came with her so as to continue their studies under her instruction. Later others joined them, fourteen in all having gone from the middle west to Los Angeles because of her fame as a teacher. Miss Vickers prefers to begin her instructions when a girl is very young and her voice is pliable, and the results she accomplishes are remarkable. Her period of teaching now extends over some sixteen years, and many of her pupils are to be found among the leading musicians of the country. She prepares them with good general work, but specializes on technique.
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These pupils are now doing church work, light opera, lyceum, Chautauqua and much club work.
Upon coming to Los Angeles Miss Vickers organized the Metropolitan Quartette and the California Girls Quartette, both of which have been im- mensely popular in the city. There is no difficulty about their securing engagements, for their services are in great demand to sing at theatres and the most prominent clubs in the city. On the first Friday nights in each month open house is held by the pupils at Miss Vickers' house, where she maintains her residence studio. Not only has she received the highest praise from the public generally in all of her work, but from the most carping of musical critics, and she has every reason to be proud of the position which she now occupies in the musical life of Los Angeles.
IDA MAY ADAMS. Apart from the fact that she is one of the few women lawyers in Southern California, Ida May Adams has been distin- guished for her special work in the law and in matters of general welfare, particularly for her leadership in protecting the Indians and her work as an educator of abnormal children.
Miss Adams was born at Lancaster, Kentucky, daughter of Willis and Elizabeth (Schuyler) Adams. She graduated A. B. from the Ken- tucky College for Women, and in subsequent years has traveled extensively in all European countries except Russia, and was a student in France and Germany. She graduated in law from the University in Southern Cali- fornia in 1920, was admitted to the bar at Los Angeles the same year and to practice in the State and Federal Courts in 1921. She is the only woman lawyer in Los Angeles actively engaged in criminal law practice. Her offices are at 901 Washington Building, and she handles a large amount of federal practice.
Miss Adams is a member of the Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County, State and American Bar Associations, belongs to the Chamber of Com- merce, and is an officer in the honorary legal fraternity Sigma Iota Chi. She was counsel for the defense of Indians tried for conspiracy in the Federal Courts, and was instrumental in securing the release of fifty-one Indians in that trial. As a result of her findings of facts in the case she brought about the organization of the Indian Welfare League, and devotes all her spare professional time to that cause. She is a member of the Legal and Legislative Committee of the League. Its executive committee is made up of such famous people as Anita Baldwin, Marah Ellis Ryan, Gene Stratton Porter, Edward D. Curtis, Stewart Edward White, William S. Hart.
Before coming to California Miss Adams was president of the Welsh- Morrow School for Boys in Eastern Kentucky. In Los Angeles she is principal of the Adams School for backward children, and she and her mother conduct the school. Two beautiful old homes on Twenty-seventh and Orchard streets have been converted into boarding schools, one for sub-normal children and the other for super-normal. The average child is well taken care of by the regular schools, but the two contrasting types find wonderful care and training in the Adams School, every child being made the object of special study and care according to its requirements. The success of the school has been nothing short of remarkable, judging by the length of the waiting list and the many prominent people interested in the cause.
LOS ANGELES CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC AND ARTS. No survey of the cultural media and advantages of Southern California would be justified in its findings were there failure to give special and appreciative recognition to the old and admirable institution whose name initiates this paragraph. This is the pioneer school of music and art in the City of Los Angeles and, in fact, in all of Southern California, and the year 1922 finds it in the fortieth year of its remarkably useful and progressive development. The institution was founded in 1883, by Mrs. Emily J. Valentine, who like-
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wise was one of the first to assume charge of the music department of the California State Normal School.
Mrs. Valentine was born in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, August 31, 1843, her father having been Rev. William Chapman. It is specially interesting and gratifying to record that Mrs. Adeltha E. Carter, daughter of the founder, Mrs. Valentine, is now president of this valued institution in the fair metropolis of Southern California.
The Conservatory is located at the Kramer School of Dancing, 1500 South Figueroa Street. Branch studios for the accommodation of resident pupils may be found in every section of the city. The conservatory was incorporated in 1911, and Jaroslaw de Zielinski, a master musician of international reputation, took charge as director. Under his admirable administration the school made the phenomenal growth that places it in foremost rank among similar institutions in California. In July, 1921, Mr. Zielinski resigned his directorship and retired from musical activities, his office at the conservatory being filled by Alfred Appling Butler.
Alfred Appling Butler was born at Middletown, Ohio, and in his initial study of music he showed remarkable talent. He had as instructors some of the foremost teachers of the United States, and while still very young he went abroad and placed himself under the direction of Guilmant, Widor, Mozskowski and other teachers of renown. In September, 1908, Mr. Butler accepted the professorship of organ, piano and theory of music at Pomona College, California, and there he continued his effective service until he entered the piano department of the Peabody Conservatory at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1917. He retained this connection two years, and then returned to California, where, in September, 1921, he assumed the office of director of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Arts.
The personnel of the faculty of this institution at the time of this writ- ing, in the summer of 1922, is here briefly noted : Mrs. Adeltha E. Carter, president ; Mrs. Katherine McD. Brown, vice-president ; Miss Sigrid Mul- gardt, secretary and treasurer ; Miss Myrtle Winnie, corresponding secre- tary and formerly connected with the piano department of Pasadena Univer- sity ; Mrs. Grace Bennett, Mrs. Veva Hanson, Mrs. Susie Rohman, Mrs. Irene Worman, Miss Sadie Sherman, teachers of piano and theory and harmony ; and a staff of well trained assistants and studio teachers. Mrs. Cordill, of 3533 Caroline Street, San Pedro, has charge of a large branch in that city. Mr. Wesley Kuhnle, F. A. G. O., of 551 East Cypress Street, Glendale, directs the classes at that place. The classes in violin are under the able direction of Earl Bishop Valentine, a talented instructor of violin. viola, violoncello and orchestration, and Bernard Berg, an honor graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Odessa, Russia. Mrs. Minnie Hance Jackins is now vocal representative with the Los Angeles, at Santa Monica, where she has a large class. She came to Los Angeles in 1886, as a school girl, her father, Captain C. H. Hance, having served many years as city treasurer. Miss Hance began singing in public at the age of fourteen years, and has been contralto soloist in some of the most prominent churches on the Pacific Coast. Her first teacher at Los Angeles was Sig. Farini, of Milan, Italy, who encouraged her to seek European masters. After many years in the study of vocal art in this country and abroad she returned, in 1913, to California, after having sung successfully in concert, oratorio and opera. In her profession Mrs. Hance Jackins was associated with such artists as Mme. Norelli, Herbert Witherspoon, John Young, Florence Otis and many others. She has appeared with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Oratorio Society, the Brahms Quartette, and also before the Ellis, Gamut and Ebell clubs of Los Angeles. She is much in demand for concert engagements.
Mrs. William Barber is director of the School of Expression. She is a thoroughly trained teacher and reader of wide experience. She was a pupil of Robert Fulton, also of Uliver Emerson Bennet of Boston and Mrs. Champ Clark of Washington, D. C. Mrs. Barber was dramatic coach for seven years at Colorado College and Colorado Springs High School. The
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course in the spoken word and offered by the Conservatory consists of work in voice, diction, interpretation, story-telling, Shakespeare and modern drama. This course requires four years for a diploma and three years for a teacher's certificate.
Wesley Kuhnle was graduated in 1915 in the College of Music of the University of Southern California, and has been since 1919 a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists. He has held important organ positions in Los Angeles and is a well known concert pianist, organist and teacher. He has studied under Ernest Douglas, Jaroslaw de Zielinski and Richard Buhlig.
The Highland Park branch of the Los Angeles Conservatory has grown rapidly since the opening of the Music Hall in that place in 1920. It has six studios and is doing specially successful work.
In the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Arts the courses are carefully graded, from kindergarten to post-graduate, and each depart- ment has its head teacher and a corps of competent assistants. Teachers' certificates are issued to those completing the normal courses, and grade certificates are given to pupils. The institution provides summer courses as well as the regular season courses. Rates of tuition are very reasonable. as the aim of the school is to give the best of musical advantages to talented pupils, poor as well as the rich.
GRACE DODGE ELWELL, D. C. One of the talented and interesting women of Los Angeles, who is favorably known professionally in other states than California, is Dr. Grace Dodge Elwell, a specialist of wide experience and one who has been particularly successful in nervous pathol- ogy. Since coming to Los Angeles Dr. Elwell has been wonderfully impressed with the opportunities afforded here for comfortable living and the enjoyment of good health, and deems them unsurpassed for the restora- tion and cure of many of the ailments which have been her specialty in research and practice. This fact, to some degree, has led her to make extensive plans for the near future along this line of beneficent effort.
Dr. Elwell was born in the City of Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a native of Rhode Island and belonged to the old Colonial Dodge family that has been of great distinction in New England and in national public affairs. She was liberally educated, attending school in both Boston and New York City, and afterward became a trained nurse, and in that capacity spent some time in the Gowanda State Hospital for the Insane, where many hundreds of cases came under her personal observation. Her interest and sympathy were so aroused that subsequently she opened a sanatorium, "Rest House," at Jamestown, New York, where persons suffer- ing from nervous maladies, caused by over strain of any kind, could be intelligently treated, and she conducted this private hospital for many years.
In the meanwhile Dr. Elwell, like the rest of the country, had learned of Southern California's unexcelled climate and other advantages, and when she came to see for herself, her objective point was Los Angeles, in which city an older brother, Hadley B. Dodge, who now lives retired at Beverley Hills, was a substantial business man. Favorably impressed in every way. she decided to complete her chiropractic studies, for which her years of experience had laid a sound foundation, and at Ratledge College, under the personal supervision of Dr. T. J. Ratledge, finished the prescribed course and was graduated with every honor. She invested in property and has become a permanent resident, proposing to build a beautiful home here and then utilize her present site for a modern hospital for the scientific treatment of nervous ailments.
Dr. Elwell, as wife and mother, has found time in spite of a professional life filled with many responsibilities to rear a family of five children. Her two sons are Theodore H. and Newton L. Theodore is a cattle man of Forrestville, New York, while Newton L. is an architect in California. Her three beautiful daughters, Beatrice, Ruth and Beth, remain with her. Dr. Elwell's younger brother, Frank Dodge, is also a resident here, applying
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himself to the study of chiropractic at Ratledge School. Dr. Elwell's patients are loud in their praise of her intelligent and skillful treatment, and personally she wins both confidence and sincere esteem.
IDA MAY ENSIGN is one of the youngest, most progressive and successful and most popular business women in the City of Los Angeles, where her splendid initiative and executive ability and her artistic taste have enabled her to build up a millinery establishment that ranks as one of the three leading concerns of the kind in this beautiful metropolis of Southern California.
Mrs. Ensign was born at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and is a representative of. one of the fine old families founded in the Keystone State in an early day and identified for generations with the Society of Friends, of which she herself is a birthright member. Mrs. Ensign acquired her youthful education in the public schools of her native state, and there she continued to reside until 1913, when she came to California and made her initial business venture by opening the Ida May Shop, at 640 South Broadway, Los Angeles, where she has continued the enterprise with unqualified success and where she now has a most modern establishment of the most attractive appointments and the most effective of service to her large and representative patronage. The Ida May Shop is to-day perhaps the best known and most popular establishment of its kind in the city. Mrs. Ensign has from the beginning handled only the finest products in millinery, and in the evolution of her beautiful "creations" of original order has used only the finest of materials, with the result that her shop has attracted the appre- ciative support of the most discriminating and representative trade. From the beginning she has made her policy one of quality rather than quantity, and has invariably given value received. She makes several times each year personal visits to the leading millinery and supply establishments in New York and Chicago, and so broad is now the scope of her business that she retains a corps of twenty skilled assistants. Her shop is situated in the very center of the fashionable' shopping district of Los Angeles, and in its metropolitan appearance and service is a distinct credit to the city.
From the exactions of business Mrs. Ensign finds needed and highly appreciated release through her enthusiastic interest in golf. She is a popular member of the San Gabriel Golf Club and passes much of her spare time on the links, where she has made an excellent record in the game and also found recreation and health-promotive exercise.
LEROY B. SHERRY, M. D., is established in the successful practice of his profession in the City of Pasadena and is giving his attention almost exclusively to surgery, his skill in which was reinforced by his service as a member of the Medical Corps of the United States Army with the American Expeditionary Forces in France in the World war.
Dr. Leroy Briggs Sherry was born in the City of Chicago, Illinois, October 10, 1887, and was a lad of ten years at the time of the family removal to California. He is a son of Dr. Henry Sherry and Lillian (Briggs) Sherry, the latter of whom died at Pasadena in March 1907, and is survived by two children, Dr. Leroy B., of this review, and Mrs. E. M. Hawkins, of Fowler, Indiana.
Dr. Henry Sherry was born in Ohio and his wife in Illinois, where their marriage was solemnized. He graduated from one of the leading medical colleges in the City of Chicago and while engaged in practice in that city he served as surgeon major of the First Infantry Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, an organization long known as "The Dandy First." After being a general practitioner in Chicago about ten years Dr. Henry Sherry came with his family to California, and he has maintained his residence in Pasadena since 1897. As an able physician and surgeon he long controlled a large and representative general practice in this community, but he now practices in only a limited degree, the insistent importunities of the families to whom
Lucay BeSherry
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he had long ministered having made it virtually impossible for him to retire entirely from the active work of his profession.
In the public schools of Pasadena Dr. Leroy B. Sherry continued his studies until his graduation from the high school in 1906. There- after he continued his studies eighteen months in the University of California and in 1910 he graduated from the University of Illinois, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In the same year he entered the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Mary- land, in which celebrated institution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1914 and with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Soon after his graduation he became an interne in Lakeside Hospital, Cleve- land, Ohio, where he continued his services until 1918 and where he became resident surgeon under Dr. George W. Crile. In 1916 Dr. Sherry became a member of the Medical Reserve Corps of the United States Army, with the rank of lieutenant, and in January, 1918, he entered active service, he having gone to France in March of that year and having there continued in active service until after the sign- ing of the armistice brought the World war to a close. He returned to the United States in April, 1919, and received his honorable dis- charge on the 16th of that month, with the rank of captain. The Doc- tor returned to Pasadena in June of that year, and in his professional work here he has confined himself almost entirely to surgical practice since that time, his offices being in the Chamber of Commerce Building. He is a member of the attending staff of Los Angeles County Hos- pital, and is a member also of the staff of the White Memorial Hospital in the City of Los Angeles. He is a member of the Los Angeles County Medical Society, the California State Medical Society and the American Medical Association, is a republican in politics, is a member of the Rotary Club of Pasadena, the University Club of Los Angeles, is affiliated with Delta Upsilon and Nu Sigma Nu college fraternities, and with Corona Lodge No. 324, A. F. and A. M., at Pasadena, besides which he is eligible and has applied for member- ship in the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, his only sister being affiliated with the Daughters of the American Revolution.
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